Refine your communication skills

The ability to communicate well is a vital key for attaining success. People who lack communication skills have to struggle to advance in their careers & maintain healthy relationships.

Effective communication skills is the mantra for career success. In an age where outsourcing and networking are the in things, your career success is contingent on how good your relationships are with your co-workers, management and clients. To quite a few people, communication is an inborn talent. However, in respect of most people, communication skills are acquired over a period of time.

Are you grappling to push your career ahead? Are you tussling to achieve any of your career objectives? If yes, it is quite likely that you are being held back by the way you communicate. There are hundreds of highly capable people with vast headship aptitudes who lack requisite skills to effectively interact with others, particularly with those who matter. Just because they are unable to sway and win over others, their careers tend to remain sluggish.

Your communication skills are very closely linked with various influences that bring about career success. Unless you possess effective communication skills, you cannot lead others, build a commanding brand image for yourself or steer through complex workplace situations. Therefore, if you seek to capitalize on the prospects of your career success, there can be no escape from improving upon your career skills. How can you hone your communication skills? Here are some guidelines:

Discern and gauge your listeners: It is essential that you know who you are communicating with. Everybody wants to think through matters and concerns in the context of own prerequisites and criteria. However, this may not be effective if you seek to bring about a change in the thought process of others. Therefore, you should determine and recognize specific issues that appeal to and inspire others. It would depend on who your audience is. To illustrate the point, if you are required to make a presentation to your boss or the management of your company, you have to make certain that the effects on company end results are accentuated. Likewise, if the audience happens to comprise individuals dealing extensively with statistics, there is no need to dwell on notional or conjectural matters; instead you should concentrate on specifics, evidences and facts to reinforce your argument.

Be concise and succinct: It is essential that you know what you intend to convey to others. It could be plain dissemination of instructions to your juniors, simple interaction with your boss or a presentation during a meeting you need to be clear about the message that you want communicated. Being succinct and concise calls for steering clear of all worry-prompted propensities to dwell on irrelevant issues or superfluous minutiae.

You need to guard against any tendency to digress from the main topic of communications. After all, accuracy is the soul of wit. It is always recommended that you start with a clear and focused message and have related information up your sleeves to facilitate responding to queries.

Communicate correctly, effectively and imaginatively: Every company has its exclusive philosophy, values, principles and beliefs. Based on these, the spoken and understood, there is absolutely no possibility that you will not be taken seriously. In fact, if you fulfill these parameters, you will be seen as an effective and persuasive conversationalist. Remember that your choice of words is an important part of communicating clearly. While there is no problem with being expressive, it is necessary that any literary flair be avoided. It is necessary that you observe the manner in which top leaders of your company talk and evolve a suitable style of your own. As a thumb rule, you must confine yourself to the use of language that is readily understood by all. Do not use flagging and apologetic language: You before conveying anything. While communicating, you ought to be assertive. There are people who are apologetic while speaking and use words like “Please pardon me for butting in…” or “It may not be very significant”. If you have to make a point, you need not be contrite. Remember that if your language is prevailing and weighty, you are more likely to be listened and paid attention to. Your aim should be to make your communications correct and effective. If you succeed in doing so, the prospects for your career success stand heightened. But if you are facing a career- related snag, you ought to focus within to find out if it is your communication skills that are deficient. And in case if it be so, your individual development plan should be restructured accordingly to incorporate efforts to improve your communication skills.